RUSH: This is MSNBC special coverage Saturday night of Palin’s address to the national tea party convention. After the speech, they spoke out there with Democrat strategerist Bob Shrum, who’s 0-fer trying to get people elected to something, he’s 0-fer. Question: ‘Talking about family and people and where America needs to go, military freedom, Ronald Reagan mentioned numerous times, Bob Shrum, it was almost too predictable.’
SHRUM: The difference with Ronald Reagan was that he always had an alternative vision of where America should go and what we heard tonight was more a masterful exercise, masterful in paranoid politics. I mean she came across to me as a merchant of hate with an ‘oh, gosh’ smile.
RUSH: A merchant of hate, which is one of the many left-wing cliches about conservatism. Reagan, don’t forget, they said at the time was a merchant of hate. Reagan was responsible for AIDS, he was responsible for homelessness, he was a racist. This is a cliched response. These people have been knocked back on their rear ends, folks. That election in Massachusetts coupled with the other two has discombobulated them. I said at the top of the program these people are never happy. I’ve made this observation over many, many years of casual observance. She comes across as happy all the time, and I think that bugs ’em as much as anything — as best as anybody can figure that out but I think that’s part of it.